When the House returns from the holiday break on Jan. 9, lawmakers will stare down several deadlines where critical legislation has to be passed in a short time frame.
This is gearing up to be an intense time for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who, in his first two months on the job, has only passed two pieces of substantive legislation — a continuing resolution and the National Defense Authorization Act — and punted the rest of the must-pass bills into early 2024.
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Here is a list of everything Johnson has to accomplish in a short time frame.
Government funding
Back in November, Congress passed a two-part continuing resolution that bifurcated when the appropriations bills would expire. Four of the bills are set to expire on Jan. 19, and the remaining eight will expire on Feb. 2. The goal was to spend time working on the first four appropriations bills from when the stop-gap measure passed until when funding ran out.
But, neither the House nor the Senate made progress on their spending bills, setting up an absolute sprint to pass legislation in the 10 days they have from getting back in session to when the first set of government funding expires.
The plan on how they will avoid a shutdown is unclear. But, multiple members and aides believe the only way will be some sort of minibus on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2, or one big omnibus that packages multiple appropriations bills together. Johnson has said that he is done with short-term continuing resolutions so if it comes to Feb. 2 and they don’t have their bills ready to pass, there is also a chance he does a year-long stop-gap measure, which would implement a 1% cut across the board, something the Senate and White House are unlikely to go for.
So, exactly what Johnson plans to do is still very much up in the air.
FISA Section 702 Reauthorization
When the House returns, it must also deal with reauthorizing and reforming Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Johnson is going to have to decide between two bills, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s bill and the House Judiciary Committee’s bill.
The House will have until April 19, 2024, to reauthorize and reform FISA 702.
Section 702 of the FISA law relates to what the Office of the Director of National Intelligence describes as “a key provision" of FISA "that permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States.”
But, over the years, it has been abused. According to a declassified FISA court opinion this year, the FBI committed FISA violations 278,000 times in recent years, including on people believed to be connected to violent George Floyd protests and the Capitol riot. This has led to bipartisan calls for reforms, but there are major differences on how far to go in reforming it.
Now, this will be a major task Johnson will have to deal with in the new year.
Each and every vote
Johnson has followed the footsteps of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), by upsetting the hard-line conservatives with just about every decision he’s made. So much so that in his less than three months as speaker, Johnson's team has had to pull numerous bills and have had rules fail.
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The speaker has been forced to pass urgent legislation, such as the final NDAA in December, under suspension of rules so the conservative rebels can’t tank the bill before it's even debated. Multiple members and aides have expressed that from here on out, almost every piece of important legislation will have to be voted on under suspension of the rules so they can skip the procedural motions and go straight to the bill. The trade-off, however, is that passage requires two-thirds of the support of the House and, therefore, considerable support from Democrats.
Going forward, Johnson will have difficulty keeping his conference together if he must rely on Democratic Party support for major legislation and inevitably anger conservatives in the process.